A common way to pick hashtags is to search a topic, look at what has the most posts, and use those. It feels like the reasonable thing to do — more posts means more people, presumably. In practice it produces a set where every tag is one you cannot win, and the post disappears.
The alternative is to think in tiers. Not by topic, but by competition level.
The three tiers
| Tier | Typical post volume | What it buys you | Realistic outcome |
|---|---|---|---|
| Broad | 1M+ | Category placement | Brief presence in a fast-moving feed; establishes what category you are in |
| Medium | 50k–500k | Most of your actual reach | A real chance of sustained visibility if engagement is decent |
| Niche | 1k–50k | High-intent audience | A genuine chance of ranking in top posts and being found by people who care |
The volumes are indicative, not exact — they vary a lot by platform and category. What matters is the relative structure: one tier you almost certainly cannot rank in, one where you might, and one where you probably can.
Why you still include the broad tier
If broad tags are unwinnable, why use them at all? Two reasons, and neither is reach.
First, classification. A broad tag is the clearest possible statement of what category your content belongs to. On recommendation-driven platforms, that helps the system place you correctly, which affects who gets shown your content in the feed — a much larger distribution channel than the hashtag page itself.
Second, they are cheap. One or two broad tags in a set of eight costs you almost nothing. The mistake is not including broad tags; it is building a set that is only broad tags.
Where the reach actually comes from
The medium tier does most of the work, and it is the tier most often skipped — partly because these tags are less obvious. They are the specific-but-not-obscure phrasings: not #fitness and not #kettlebellcomplexesforbeginners, but #homeworkout, #strengthtraining, #kettlebellworkout.
These tags have enough audience to matter and enough turnover that a decent post can stay visible for a meaningful window. If you get one tier right, make it this one. A practical target is three to five medium tags in any set.
Why the niche tier punches above its weight
A tag with 8,000 posts sounds negligible. It is often the most valuable tag in the set, for two reasons.
The first is rankability. With low volume, a post with genuinely good engagement can hold a top-posts position for days rather than seconds. That is durable visibility, not a flash.
The second is intent. Someone following or searching #castironrestoration is not idly scrolling — they have a specific interest, and content matching it converts to follows, saves, and comments at a far higher rate than generic impressions. Fifty views from a niche tag routinely outperform five thousand from a broad one on every metric that compounds.
How the mix shifts with account size
This is the part most frameworks omit. The right ratio is not fixed — it depends on the engagement velocity you can actually generate.
| Account size | Broad | Medium | Niche | Reasoning |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Under 1,000 | 0–1 | 2–3 | 3–5 | Cannot compete anywhere broad; niche is where visibility is achievable |
| 1,000–10,000 | 1 | 3–4 | 3–4 | Balanced — medium tags become genuinely winnable |
| 10,000–100,000 | 1–2 | 4–5 | 2–3 | Enough velocity to rank in medium; broad becomes worth a shot |
| 100,000+ | 2 | 4 | 1–2 | Broad tags now realistically rankable; niche gives diminishing returns at scale |
The pattern: small accounts should weight niche, large accounts should weight broad, and everyone should keep the medium tier populated. If you have been using the same tag block since you had 200 followers and now have 20,000, it is calibrated for the wrong account.
Finding tags in each tier
- Start broad. Type your category into the platform’s search and note the post count on the obvious tag. That is your broad tier — you probably need only one.
- Read the related suggestions. Every platform shows adjacent tags when you open one. These suggestions are the platform’s own model of topical adjacency, which makes them far more reliable than guessing. Most of your medium tier comes from here.
- Go one level more specific than feels natural. Add the place, the technique, the sub-community, the specific problem. If
#homeworkoutis your medium tag,#apartmentfriendlyworkoutor#nogymneededis the niche layer. - Check counts before committing. A tag you assumed was niche may have three million posts; one you assumed was dead may have a healthy, active community.
- Discard anything you cannot justify. If you cannot say in one sentence why a tag describes this specific post, drop it.
Applying it: one topic, three tiers
Take a video about meal-prepping on a tight student budget.
- Broad:
#mealprep— names the category, establishes classification. - Medium:
#budgetmeals,#cheapeats,#studentcooking— where realistic reach lives. - Niche:
#dormcooking,#20poundsaweek,#studentbudgetmeals— small, specific, rankable, high-intent.
Seven tags. Every one of them describes the video. A stranger reading only the tags could tell you what the video is about — which is the test the thirty-tag block always failed.